PlayStation owners will no longer be able to install Linux on their machines if they go ahead with a new firmware upgradedue to arrive this week.

PS3 Firmware 3.21, out this Thursday, will disable the 'Install Other OS' feature now available on those PS3 systems which came out before the current slimmer models last September.

While few people actually went ahead and installed a different operating system, those that did valued the ability highly. Clusters of PS3s running Linux have been used effectively for large computational problems, for example.

Sony is citing 'security concerns' as the reason.

"For most of you, this won’t have any impact on how you use your PS3," the company claims. "If you are one of the few who use the “Other OS” feature, or if you belong to an organisation that does, then you can choose not to upgrade your system."

Choosing not to upgrade, though, has some pretty major effects - most notably, users will lose the ability to sign in to PlayStation Network and use associated features such as online aspects of PS3 games and chat.

Players will also not be able to play back PS3 software titles or Blu-ray videos that require PS3 system software version 3.21 or later.

Playback of copyright-protected videos that are stored on a media server will also go, as will new features introduced with PS3 system software 3.21 or later.

I am hoping this is an April fools joke or all of those folding farms and supercomputers the government built using the PS3 will no longer function. If you can not get online, you cant get or send results for f@h. Now if they just use them on their own intranet, I doubt it will matter to them, so they just wont upgrade.

Mike

Security reasons - more like someone found a way to start working on a hack and they decided to just close the whole thing off rather than fixing it. That is my thought on it.

Well the main reason this is just a lame thing to do is our own government is using something like 2000 ps3's for a cluster computer! Null and void once this goes live!

Also, I believe they did this because of the hack that was released into the wild about uding the "Other OS" option along with some soldering to be able to do things on the console. I dont know if any pirating of games was done (at blu-ray size, is it really wirth it?) but Sony decided to close it up out of fear.

They removed PS2 emulation, some sahcd or something like that and now other os usage - what else can they get rid of? *sigh* I know it will not effect many users but removing things from a console people paid good money for is just ludicrous in my eyes.

It's financial. Sony still loses money on PS3 consoles, they make it back on game licensing.

PS3 consoles are actually highly effective computers for research and engineering (from what I've heard anyway), Sony is probably trying to close the loophole of eating the hardware cost of others using their technology for non-gaming purposes.

Don't assume Sony does anything other than to fill their pockets. They are one of the more evil greedy corporations (remember SONY DRM). Security concerns is an excuse for we are losing money to people who use our technology for anything other than buying our games.